Prestwick’s Freight Success Takes Yet Another Giant Leap Forward

Doug Maclean - Aviation Editor. 22nd November 2025.

4 additional flights each week start today with Air China. The new service comes from Chengdhu in central China with a stop over in Stockholm, Sweden.

Image - Eddie Wallace

When Ayrshire Daily News reported live from Prestwick airport in the middle of a cold February night I described the occasion as a very special night and the start of something really exciting.

We saw the arrival of the first ever commercial freight flight from China into Scotland. The choice of Prestwick airport was greeted with delight. On that occasion we heard from the freight development manager Nico Le Roux and we were told by the Prestwick Board that the introduction of new scheduled services was a “game changer”.

The possibility was raised that night that we might see several flights a week from China and as a seasoned Prestwick watcher I wondered if this new “e commerce” idea was going to succeed.

E commerce is a description of modern shopping. Vast amounts of items are bought daily on the internet and much of it is express delivered by air and speedily trucked to the home of the buyer.

The Board of Prestwick airport had invested millions of pounds in new freight handling equipment and a huge warehouse was sitting waiting to handle the freight.

Graphic - Prestwick Aviation Tours

Newly recruited staff were poised to open the freight containers, to sort the packages and to load them on to waiting trucks and deliver to destinations across the UK. We heard figures of “nearly 50” staff joining Team Prestwick.

A couple of months quietly passed and then we began to see real activity when China Southern started a new scheduled, 4 times a week, service with the massive Boeing 777 F freighter from Guangzhou on the east coast of China.

Next came Air China. The national carrier of China also arrived with Boeing 777Fs. Another 4 flights a week, this time from China’s capital city Beijing, Each aeroplane arrived with over 100 tonnes of valuable freight.

Excitingly we found out that Air China had brought over as many as 14 staff to be based at Prestwick and to make this the centre of Air China’s UK freight operations. Scotland has seldom seen such an operation being set up and Prestwick never has before.

What were the possibilities that the airport Board had seen in this new e commerce business ? To be honest very few people do know what is planned because the air freight business is highly competitive and future moves are kept under wraps until they happen

On 16th October Capital Airlines, on behalf of Jiangxi Air Cargo, started a another new 4 times a week scheduled service. This time from Zhengzhou Xinzheng International Airport in Eastern China.

We also learned that more than 200 new jobs had been created at Prestwick to handle the booming freight arrivals. Further investment was made in cold storage and the best quality security scanning equipment to speed exports through the airport and boost Scottish exports to China.

Freight imports are booming. Exports are now beginning to rise from a very low base. UK exporters are now seeing the opportunities to use the rapid handling carried out at Prestwick. A tracking graph has been made for us by Prestwick Aviation Tours. The rise in air freight is truly remarkable.

Expansion at Prestwick is happening at a dizzying pace. The airport seems set to continue this incredible drive to success and are now targeting India and its 1.4 billion population. The UK and India have just signed a new trade agreement and the Scottish salmon and whisky industries have their eyes on possibly the biggest market in the world.

Prestwick now has up to 16 flights a week to and from China. Will we see Prestwick to India flights follow the same path ? We now believe anything is possible and it’s brilliant for Ayrshire.

Watch this space. Ayrshire Daily News will be here to record every move in this wonderful success.